RFK Jr. calls for cleaner energy

Nicole Rivard

Published 10:04 pm, Friday, October 19, 2012

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

At left, Jennifer Herring, president of the Maritime Aquarium, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, who was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

At left, Jennifer Herring, president of the Maritime Aquarium, with...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, meets donors prior to being the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental advocate, was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Terry Backer of Soundkeeper, an organization dedicated to protecting and preserving Long Island Sound, was in attendence to hear a lecture by friend and fellow environmental advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was the featured speaker for the first of the new "Global Insights" lectures at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Thursday night, Oct. 18, 2012.
Photo: Bob Luckey

NORWALK -- On the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy spoke to donors at the Maritime Aquarium about the importance of protecting nature and fighting big polluters.

Kennedy, a resident of Mount Kisco, N.Y. and frequent visitor to the aquarium with his children, kicked off a new "Global Insights" public lecture series focusing on U.S. environmental and energy policies.

He began by thanking Terry Backer, executive director of the Norwalk-based Soundkeeper organization, which is dedicated to the protection and enhancement of the Long Island Sound and its watershed. Kennedy is chief prosecuting attorney and co-founder of the Hudson Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance.

"One of the things that Terry taught me from the beginning is that we aren't protecting the environment so much for the sake of the fish and the birds, we are protecting it because we recognize that nature is the infrastructure of our communities," Kennedy said. "And that if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a civilization, as a nation, which is to create or provide communities for our children that will give them the same opportunities of dignity and enrichment and prosperity and good health as the communities that our parents gave us, we have to start protecting our environmental infrastructure. The air we breathe, the wildlife, the fish.

Kennedy went on to say that one of the mantras you hear from the big polluters is that you have to choose between economic prosperity and environmental protection.

"That is a false choice. In 100 percent of the situations, environmental policy is identical to good economic policy, if we want to measure our economy based on how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over generations, over the longterm, and how it preserves the assets of our community," Kennedy said. "The polluters want us to treat the planet as if it were a business and liquidation, convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, and have a few years of pollution-based prosperity. Our kids are going to pay for it."

Kennedy called the United States' "deadly addiction" to the carbon industry the principle drag on American capitalism.

He said the United States borrows one billion dollars every single day, mainly from nations that don't share its values, to import a billion dollars of oil a day.

"This has beggared a nation that, when I was a little boy, owned half the wealth on the face of the planet," he said.

He lamented how the United States gives trillions of dollars a year in subsidies to the nuclear, oil and coal industries.

"Coal is the most highly subsidized. Coal says it is cheap and clean, and we know it's a dirty lie when they say they are clean," Kennedy said. "But it's also a lie when they say they are cheap. If they had to internalize the actual costs that they are imposing on our society it would be the most catastrophic way to boil a pot of water that's ever been devised."

But the worst cost of coal can be seen in the Appalachian Mountains, Kennedy said.

"We are cutting down the Appalachian Mountains literally with these giant machines called drag lines," he explained. "According to the Environmental Protection Agency over the past decade they have buried over 2,200 miles of rivers and streams and they have flattened the 500 biggest Appalachian mountains."

Looking to the future, Kennedy said the Obama administration needs to help construct a national grid system that functions as a marketplace for renewable power. He said the U.S. needs a national program like Eisenhower launched in the 1950s and 60's to build our highway system and have it reach every community in the country.

He believes that every American can be their own energy entrepreneur and every home a power plant.

At his own home, Kennedy utilizes a geothermal system and solar panels.

"It's a power plant," he said. "I produce almost every day of the year much more energy than I can use. I should be able to sell that energy back onto the grid at market rates for it. We need a marketplace that rewards good behavior, which is efficiency, and to punish bad behavior, which is inefficiency and waste."